UCDCritic wrote: » ...But I can help but feel Irish people are just emotionally damaged in such a way that on a deep level we feel not quite adequate and it's not fixable In my experience with international people who have come to study and work in Ireland it seems their general perception of Irish people is that we are incompetent, like we are the drunk children of Europe, and I think they're right
Sulla Felix wrote: » Load of bollix. How can you be emotionally damaged by shít that happened before your grandparents were born ffs.
whirlpool wrote: » Why don't you ask the international black community that question?
UCDCritic wrote: » It's true that patterns of behaviour and thoughts can become internalized and passed on to the next generation and so on
Sulla Felix wrote: » People choose victimhood. There are lots of perfectly well adjusted, succesful, non-emotionally damaged irish people, black people, asian people, jewish people etc etc. No nation or ethnicity has a monopoly on suffering.
Legs.Eleven wrote: » We suffered the most imo.
Slicemeister wrote: » Hadn't realised I'd been colonized! Didn't feel a thing.
Fox_In_Socks wrote: » Scans for sarcasm. Just as I did a few weeks ago!:pac: (though you probably don't remember) On topic, in what way?
Peist2007 wrote: » Worse than North Korea? Genuinely curious, never did history at school
me wrote: Nobody ever seems to talk about root causes when it comes to binge drinking. The simple fact is that young people get locked mainly so as they can cast aside the extreme and abnormal national social inhibition which has been fostered on repeated generations of Irish people. Alcohol allows them to temporarily shut down the voice in their head which says "don't say hi to that girl, you'll probably make an idiot of yourself", or "don't talk to those people, you'll probably annoy them". We have a severe national shyness - illustrated to me by an extremely attractive Turkish girl I met in a nightclub last year who pondered why Irish guys would never approach her, and why those few who did always had to be hammered out of it first. Ask actual young people why they binge drink, and the most common answer is because it gets rid of their inhibitions, their in-built lack of self confidence and irrational shame which leads them to severely undervalue themselves both socially and sexually. I'm not blaming the Church as many do, that's too easy an answer. It's a national, cultural phenomenon which in my experience is unique to Ireland, whereby the idea of leaving one's comfort zone on a night out and meeting new people - the main focus of going out in most other Western countries - is a scary concept which requires a gigantic social crutch to be contemplated. My eyes were only opened to this after several trips abroad, on which I discovered that this extreme level of inhibition common to most Irish young people is not norma as I had once believed, but in an international context, incredibly bizarre. People in other countries don't drink like we do because people in other countries don't have hangups about social interactions which require a desensitizing drug to overcome.
UCDCritic wrote: » Maybe it's because we were colonized for so long Maybe it's because of the Catholic church and their weapons of blame and shame and other horrors Maybe it's because of mass migration for so many generations ...But I can help but feel Irish people are just emotionally damaged in such a way that on a deep level we feel not quite adequate and it's not fixable In my experience with international people who have come to study and work in Ireland it seems their general perception of Irish people is that we are incompetent, like we are the drunk children of Europe, and I think they're right For so long we were a poor nation and as soon as we have some real money we squandered it like a child wasting their money on too many sweets not knowing how to really spend the money I think it's all just rooted in low self esteem as a nation
Legs.Eleven wrote: » Oh god yeah! Worse than anywhere. You name a country, we suffered more than them. I mightn't have even heard of the country but tenner bets we suffered more.
Peist2007 wrote: » What about.....Micronesia?
Legs.Eleven wrote: » Pah! :rolleyes: Obviously! They wouldn't know suffering if it gave them a wedgy.
